RyanB
Legacy of Elijah Guild Leader
EDIT: This guide is almost current, still need to add some things, check spelling, etc
The goals of this guide are to walk a party through the UW doing the most difficult quests first (to avoid wiping at the end) and give pointers on how to successfully clear each area. Each area has been split up into its own section for your reading convenience. I’d recommend reading the section first before going through so that you know what to expect.
Tip 1: never, ever take a quest unless your party leader tells you to.
Tip 2: There are no res shrines, so don’t wipe
Tip 3: If any reapers or quest NPCs die at any time, you will be kicked out of the UW and back to town
Tip 4: DP isn’t usually a big problem – quest xp will erase it and it’s not like you can wipe, but a conset definitely helps
Tip 5: Now that Dhuum is lose, you should have FIVE res scrolls, just in case. You will use them eventually, anyway, so go buy now.
Tip 6: One Skeleton of Dhuum isn't too bad, but be VERY careful when you get 2 or 3 around. Try to take these nasties down ASAP.
What to bring?
This is not intended to be a "you need these classes with these builds" section...but a guide of what I'd recommend and why.
Dedicated Tank - Obsidian Flesh or Shadow Form tank.
You do not need a tank to finish UW. It works out like this: with a good tank, four horsemen is easier, as you can slowly finish off one side then move to the other at your leisure. However, bringing a tank also makes every other UW quest more difficult, due to the lost damage. I prefer to do without, but I seem to be in the minority.
SoS Technobabble Rit - Painful Bond, Summon Spirits, Technobabble, Spirit Siphon, Signet of Spirits, Vampirism, Pain, Bloodsong. A silencing spear can help technobabble, especially with rounding.
I think this is your best ally for UW. Aatxe hit hard, but aren't much problem for a group, and skeleton damage can't be mitigated. Every other dangerous thing in the UW is a caster! Aside from dropping cast time in half, spirits (or a barrager) pounding the enemies will keep them useless.
Panic Me/ or /Me Again, tough parts of UW are due to nasty groups of casters. Panic is awesome.
UA Monks - Really, really recommend UA as the monk elite here. Heaven's delight/divine healing do well to mitigate party-wide damage, and quite honestly, nothing saves your bacon better than 4 resurrections in .25 seconds on a partial party wipe - when you need it most!
Damage dealersBarragers synergize nicely with technobabble, SS, Savannah Heat, Searing flames...whatever, bring your favorite "make yellow numbers" build.
Fall back! - UW is a very long place, this will save you an awful lot of time. This helps especially if you don't have a tank for horsemen.
Ebon Battle Standard of Honor - Boost everyone's damage. No reason not have one copy of this; no spell does more damage than what this adds up for your team.
Clear the Chamber
When you spawn, make sure everybody on your team has also spawned and is ready before moving. Once everybody has loaded, proceed around the chamber and immediate areas clearing out Aatxes, Skeletons of Dhuum, and Graspings. They hit very hard, so try to take them down fast and keep them off your backline with your spirits. After clearing them out, go back to your starting point, and have one player talk to the Lost Soul and take the Clear the Chamber quest. This will spawn several grasping darknesses (warriors). Once the area around the lost soul is secure, have the rest of the team take the quest and proceed towards the terrorweb dryders (watch out for meteor shower!), killing everything in sight. Technobabble will render the dryders pretty harmless.
UW Map on wiki:
The Four Horseman
When the reaper of the labyrinth spawns, have all players take the Restoring Grenth's Monuments quest (and only this quest). This is basically a quest to complete all of the other quests, so you can pretty much ignore it for a while. Proceed to fight your way towards the chaos plains (see map above). If you run into smite crawlers (like I do each time), you are going the wrong way. Obsidian behemoths lay very nasty traps and have a lot of blocking, so if you have multiple front-liners, try to trigger traps with one (like your tank with stoneflesh) and have the rest engage once they are gone…or just sit back and nuke. After fighting your way past many obsidian behemoths, you will come to a stairway leading down to the chaos plains. I recommend killing the behemoths around this area to get rid of nature’s renewal.
In the chaos plains, be aware that killing most banished dream riders will spawn a group of 3 mindblade spectres (migraine mesmers). Once these 3 are killed, 6 spawn. Once the 6 are killed, 9 spawn. These groups cause a lot of party wipes, so be careful. They will not spawn on top of you, but rather near your location and then move towards your party.
Have your tank (if you have one) or SoS rit ball up the groups and take aggro. For a tank, run forward and grab aggro, then slowly back up; they will get closer together as they walk towards you in a straight line. For SoS rit, just drop spirits in their path and they will do this naturally. Then have your party move in and smash them. Continue to do this until the chaos plains are clear.
Note: be very careful around the terrorweb dryders. You want to kill them last! If you do not, you may have hordes of mindblade spectres on your reaper. This is…undesireable. There is a Dream Rider and pop-ups close to the terrorwebs. Have your SoS put spirits on the hill to the west and painful bond, should go down easy. Then back away from dryders.
The Four Horsemen is highly regarded as the most difficult quest in the UW. Four “horsemen” (power block mesmers), several terrorweb dryders, and skeletons spawn from 2 directions and come towards the reaper.
Consets are recommended for this quest. By now you should have a lot of stuff in inventory, so try to pop a merch stone, sell all your stuff, and THEN do the quest so you aren't wasting them while merching.
If using a tank: have your tank sit at reaper, while the rest of your positions themself just north at the spot to where the road splits (see map). Get the party in position to kill the far right horsemen, Kazhad Dhuum (see map in above link). You want to be very close to where he spawns because you want to take down that group by itself. If you are further back, you will likely have to fight both horsemen and all of their dryders at once, which greatly increases the chances of wiping. Have your obby tank take the quest, and then move towards the two west reapers. The party should call a target and take down the dryders as fast as possible, followed by the horsemen. If Ghozer’s group begins to run by you, just aggro them too. Once the groups are down, head back past the reaper towards your tank, and take down that side. Once all groups are down, have everybody proceed to the reaper to take and accept the quest.
If you did not bring a tank: This is still very possible to do. Same as above, get main party in position, but use your SoS to take the quest instead.
Notes for SoS: Cast spirits just before taking quest, so they are recharged when you start fighting. The horsemen are NOT bosses; technobabble will work on them. Try to get both them and the dryders if you can. Try to wait to summon spirits until meteors start dropping. Recast spirits when needed.
Notes for main team: SoS will likely drop, so kill quickly and use Fall Back (call it) to get back to the reaper quickly. If SoS falls before you're finished taking out enemies, retreat anyway. The enemies will not target the reaper; it's level 28 with lots of health. Still, don't stand beside it because you don't want a meteor shower dropped.
Imprisoned Spirits
Your conset should last you through this previously easy and now somewhat difficult quest. Make your way north to the bone pits, taking out groups of dead collectors and dead threshers. These guys aren’t very tough, but it’s pretty easy to over-aggro at some points (like near the bridge), so be careful and pull where possible. Clear out everything that moves in the bone pits, although you can mostly ignore the chained souls, since they respawn and do no damage. As always, try to kill all hostiles around the dryders before actually taking them out if it’s feasible.
Have your party sit @ green dot. Have one person behind to take Imprisoned Spirits quest, then work your way south. Dryders will come into the pits from the south, and work their way north towards the spirits. There will also be spawns from behind (north). Take them out fast, and monks - watch those tortured spirits and heal if they are getting hit.
Servants of Grenth
Talk to the reaper of the chaos plains and ask to be teleported back to the labyrinth. This will take you closer to another difficult quest: Servants of Grenth. Work your way towards the Ice Wastes (see first map). This area is not usually that difficult, but it is very easy to over-aggro with all the smite crawler and coldfire patrols. When in doubt, pulling is highly recommended. Make sure you have all of the enemies around the dryders/reaper before moving on. Did I mention technobabble is nice here?
Lots of enemies spawn, heading towards the reaper (majority, it seems) and the king. Position your SoS by the king before starting quest - they can easily take care of that side, leaving 7 for the main side. Don't stray too far from the king, because enemies will spawn from the north of him too.
Main team position yourself just north of the reaper, have someone (monk?) take the quest, and smash everything that moves.
Note: I've edited this far; everything below is likely out of date and needs some work. Will do that before Friday.
Wrathful Spirits
The Wrathful Spirits quest actually isn’t very hard, but doing it first does make the next two quests easier. Have the reaper of the ice wastes teleport you back to the labyrinth. Work your way towards the southwest clearing out aatxes, grasping darknesses, coldfires, and stalking nights on your way to the dryders/reaper. Once you kill the dryders, I would recommend clearing out the patrols for a healthy amount of distance behind the reaper lest they wander too close at some point.
Before designating a player to take the quest, take note of the location of the mayor. You need to keep at least one tortured spirit alive, as well as the mayor (although no groups spawn here him, so it usually isn’t a big deal). Several groups of level 15 illusionary weapon mesmers will be spawning…so just head towards the mayor first and clear all of the groups out. Just make sure you keep him alive, along with some souls. Have everybody take the quest and accept the reward.
Unwanted Guests
Unwanted Guests is not very difficult if you know how to do it. What you need to know is that the Vengeful Aatxes are absolutely invulnerable. The goal is to kill the six keeper of souls. Many of these groups can be gotten from behind without actually aggroing the aatxe (see map). The aatxes will die if their keeper dies and they are not within aggro range. Whatever you do, do not run away and lead them towards a reaper, or you will be headed back to town. Along with attacking from behind, try to keep one player at a reaper so that they can teleport the party away if need be.
Have the reaper of the forgotten vale teleport you to the labyrinth and have everybody take the Unwanted Guests quest from the reaper. Teleport back to the forgotten vale, and leave one player (your obby tank) there while the rest of the party and works their way back towards the labyrinth to take the first group from behind. You should be able to do this without even aggroing the aatxe. Once the dryders and keeper of souls is down, have your obby teleport you to the ice wastes. Again, leave your tank behind while the rest of the party takes out the groups. Remember, if you do aggro a vengeful aatxe, don’t panic and run around like a maniac, just take out the keeper and have your tank teleport you to safety. Even if you wipe, a res scroll on your tank should fix you up. Repeat this process until this quest is finished, and have everybody accept the quest reward from the reaper.
Escort of Souls
Have everybody take the Escort of Souls quest from the reaper. The easiest way to do this is to teleport back to the forgotten vale and work backwards towards the reaper of the labyrinth, killing the mindblade spectres (groups of 6) along the way. After clearing the way from this direction, escort the new souls back to Mayor Alegheri in the vale. Have everybody accept the quest reward. Be sure to kill the group of 6 mindblades that spawn at the starting point of the UW (see map) at this time.
Terrorweb Queen
Teleport to the chaos plains, and then work your way west towards the reaper of the spawning pools. This area is filled with many groups of charged blacknesses and terrorweb dryders, so be careful not to overaggro and watch out for multiple meteor showers. Pulling is highly recommended. Fortunately, the blacknesses tend to be very easy to pull. You can also use your obby tank to pull and get aggro before engaging.
Once you get to the reaper, have everybody take the Terrorweb Queen quest. The queen is invulnerable until you have taken down all of her guardians, so make sure you call a target and focus on one at a time. Once the guardians are dead, take down the queen. This should not be very difficult after the hordes you have just gone through. Have everybody accept the rewards and teleport back to the chaos plains.
Demon Assassin
Work your way towards the reaper of the twin serpent mountains fighting behemoths along the way. Be careful near the terrorweb dryders as there are many akwardly-placed behemoths along the way. If possible, take out all of the behemoths before taking down the last dryder. Once everything is cleared out, have one person take the Demon Assassin quest.
Have everyone move down the mountain and towards the east where the Slayer and two keeper of souls will be working their way towards you. Take them out, and then have everybody take/accept the quest reward. Teleport to the chaos plains.
Congratulations!
The goals of this guide are to walk a party through the UW doing the most difficult quests first (to avoid wiping at the end) and give pointers on how to successfully clear each area. Each area has been split up into its own section for your reading convenience. I’d recommend reading the section first before going through so that you know what to expect.
Tip 1: never, ever take a quest unless your party leader tells you to.
Tip 2: There are no res shrines, so don’t wipe
Tip 3: If any reapers or quest NPCs die at any time, you will be kicked out of the UW and back to town
Tip 4: DP isn’t usually a big problem – quest xp will erase it and it’s not like you can wipe, but a conset definitely helps
Tip 5: Now that Dhuum is lose, you should have FIVE res scrolls, just in case. You will use them eventually, anyway, so go buy now.
Tip 6: One Skeleton of Dhuum isn't too bad, but be VERY careful when you get 2 or 3 around. Try to take these nasties down ASAP.
What to bring?
This is not intended to be a "you need these classes with these builds" section...but a guide of what I'd recommend and why.
Dedicated Tank - Obsidian Flesh or Shadow Form tank.
You do not need a tank to finish UW. It works out like this: with a good tank, four horsemen is easier, as you can slowly finish off one side then move to the other at your leisure. However, bringing a tank also makes every other UW quest more difficult, due to the lost damage. I prefer to do without, but I seem to be in the minority.
SoS Technobabble Rit - Painful Bond, Summon Spirits, Technobabble, Spirit Siphon, Signet of Spirits, Vampirism, Pain, Bloodsong. A silencing spear can help technobabble, especially with rounding.
I think this is your best ally for UW. Aatxe hit hard, but aren't much problem for a group, and skeleton damage can't be mitigated. Every other dangerous thing in the UW is a caster! Aside from dropping cast time in half, spirits (or a barrager) pounding the enemies will keep them useless.
Panic Me/ or /Me Again, tough parts of UW are due to nasty groups of casters. Panic is awesome.
UA Monks - Really, really recommend UA as the monk elite here. Heaven's delight/divine healing do well to mitigate party-wide damage, and quite honestly, nothing saves your bacon better than 4 resurrections in .25 seconds on a partial party wipe - when you need it most!
Damage dealersBarragers synergize nicely with technobabble, SS, Savannah Heat, Searing flames...whatever, bring your favorite "make yellow numbers" build.
Fall back! - UW is a very long place, this will save you an awful lot of time. This helps especially if you don't have a tank for horsemen.
Ebon Battle Standard of Honor - Boost everyone's damage. No reason not have one copy of this; no spell does more damage than what this adds up for your team.
Clear the Chamber
When you spawn, make sure everybody on your team has also spawned and is ready before moving. Once everybody has loaded, proceed around the chamber and immediate areas clearing out Aatxes, Skeletons of Dhuum, and Graspings. They hit very hard, so try to take them down fast and keep them off your backline with your spirits. After clearing them out, go back to your starting point, and have one player talk to the Lost Soul and take the Clear the Chamber quest. This will spawn several grasping darknesses (warriors). Once the area around the lost soul is secure, have the rest of the team take the quest and proceed towards the terrorweb dryders (watch out for meteor shower!), killing everything in sight. Technobabble will render the dryders pretty harmless.
UW Map on wiki:
The Four Horseman
When the reaper of the labyrinth spawns, have all players take the Restoring Grenth's Monuments quest (and only this quest). This is basically a quest to complete all of the other quests, so you can pretty much ignore it for a while. Proceed to fight your way towards the chaos plains (see map above). If you run into smite crawlers (like I do each time), you are going the wrong way. Obsidian behemoths lay very nasty traps and have a lot of blocking, so if you have multiple front-liners, try to trigger traps with one (like your tank with stoneflesh) and have the rest engage once they are gone…or just sit back and nuke. After fighting your way past many obsidian behemoths, you will come to a stairway leading down to the chaos plains. I recommend killing the behemoths around this area to get rid of nature’s renewal.
In the chaos plains, be aware that killing most banished dream riders will spawn a group of 3 mindblade spectres (migraine mesmers). Once these 3 are killed, 6 spawn. Once the 6 are killed, 9 spawn. These groups cause a lot of party wipes, so be careful. They will not spawn on top of you, but rather near your location and then move towards your party.
Have your tank (if you have one) or SoS rit ball up the groups and take aggro. For a tank, run forward and grab aggro, then slowly back up; they will get closer together as they walk towards you in a straight line. For SoS rit, just drop spirits in their path and they will do this naturally. Then have your party move in and smash them. Continue to do this until the chaos plains are clear.
Note: be very careful around the terrorweb dryders. You want to kill them last! If you do not, you may have hordes of mindblade spectres on your reaper. This is…undesireable. There is a Dream Rider and pop-ups close to the terrorwebs. Have your SoS put spirits on the hill to the west and painful bond, should go down easy. Then back away from dryders.
The Four Horsemen is highly regarded as the most difficult quest in the UW. Four “horsemen” (power block mesmers), several terrorweb dryders, and skeletons spawn from 2 directions and come towards the reaper.
Consets are recommended for this quest. By now you should have a lot of stuff in inventory, so try to pop a merch stone, sell all your stuff, and THEN do the quest so you aren't wasting them while merching.
If using a tank: have your tank sit at reaper, while the rest of your positions themself just north at the spot to where the road splits (see map). Get the party in position to kill the far right horsemen, Kazhad Dhuum (see map in above link). You want to be very close to where he spawns because you want to take down that group by itself. If you are further back, you will likely have to fight both horsemen and all of their dryders at once, which greatly increases the chances of wiping. Have your obby tank take the quest, and then move towards the two west reapers. The party should call a target and take down the dryders as fast as possible, followed by the horsemen. If Ghozer’s group begins to run by you, just aggro them too. Once the groups are down, head back past the reaper towards your tank, and take down that side. Once all groups are down, have everybody proceed to the reaper to take and accept the quest.
If you did not bring a tank: This is still very possible to do. Same as above, get main party in position, but use your SoS to take the quest instead.
Notes for SoS: Cast spirits just before taking quest, so they are recharged when you start fighting. The horsemen are NOT bosses; technobabble will work on them. Try to get both them and the dryders if you can. Try to wait to summon spirits until meteors start dropping. Recast spirits when needed.
Notes for main team: SoS will likely drop, so kill quickly and use Fall Back (call it) to get back to the reaper quickly. If SoS falls before you're finished taking out enemies, retreat anyway. The enemies will not target the reaper; it's level 28 with lots of health. Still, don't stand beside it because you don't want a meteor shower dropped.
Imprisoned Spirits
Your conset should last you through this previously easy and now somewhat difficult quest. Make your way north to the bone pits, taking out groups of dead collectors and dead threshers. These guys aren’t very tough, but it’s pretty easy to over-aggro at some points (like near the bridge), so be careful and pull where possible. Clear out everything that moves in the bone pits, although you can mostly ignore the chained souls, since they respawn and do no damage. As always, try to kill all hostiles around the dryders before actually taking them out if it’s feasible.
Have your party sit @ green dot. Have one person behind to take Imprisoned Spirits quest, then work your way south. Dryders will come into the pits from the south, and work their way north towards the spirits. There will also be spawns from behind (north). Take them out fast, and monks - watch those tortured spirits and heal if they are getting hit.
Servants of Grenth
Talk to the reaper of the chaos plains and ask to be teleported back to the labyrinth. This will take you closer to another difficult quest: Servants of Grenth. Work your way towards the Ice Wastes (see first map). This area is not usually that difficult, but it is very easy to over-aggro with all the smite crawler and coldfire patrols. When in doubt, pulling is highly recommended. Make sure you have all of the enemies around the dryders/reaper before moving on. Did I mention technobabble is nice here?
Lots of enemies spawn, heading towards the reaper (majority, it seems) and the king. Position your SoS by the king before starting quest - they can easily take care of that side, leaving 7 for the main side. Don't stray too far from the king, because enemies will spawn from the north of him too.
Main team position yourself just north of the reaper, have someone (monk?) take the quest, and smash everything that moves.
Note: I've edited this far; everything below is likely out of date and needs some work. Will do that before Friday.
Wrathful Spirits
The Wrathful Spirits quest actually isn’t very hard, but doing it first does make the next two quests easier. Have the reaper of the ice wastes teleport you back to the labyrinth. Work your way towards the southwest clearing out aatxes, grasping darknesses, coldfires, and stalking nights on your way to the dryders/reaper. Once you kill the dryders, I would recommend clearing out the patrols for a healthy amount of distance behind the reaper lest they wander too close at some point.
Before designating a player to take the quest, take note of the location of the mayor. You need to keep at least one tortured spirit alive, as well as the mayor (although no groups spawn here him, so it usually isn’t a big deal). Several groups of level 15 illusionary weapon mesmers will be spawning…so just head towards the mayor first and clear all of the groups out. Just make sure you keep him alive, along with some souls. Have everybody take the quest and accept the reward.
Unwanted Guests
Unwanted Guests is not very difficult if you know how to do it. What you need to know is that the Vengeful Aatxes are absolutely invulnerable. The goal is to kill the six keeper of souls. Many of these groups can be gotten from behind without actually aggroing the aatxe (see map). The aatxes will die if their keeper dies and they are not within aggro range. Whatever you do, do not run away and lead them towards a reaper, or you will be headed back to town. Along with attacking from behind, try to keep one player at a reaper so that they can teleport the party away if need be.
Have the reaper of the forgotten vale teleport you to the labyrinth and have everybody take the Unwanted Guests quest from the reaper. Teleport back to the forgotten vale, and leave one player (your obby tank) there while the rest of the party and works their way back towards the labyrinth to take the first group from behind. You should be able to do this without even aggroing the aatxe. Once the dryders and keeper of souls is down, have your obby teleport you to the ice wastes. Again, leave your tank behind while the rest of the party takes out the groups. Remember, if you do aggro a vengeful aatxe, don’t panic and run around like a maniac, just take out the keeper and have your tank teleport you to safety. Even if you wipe, a res scroll on your tank should fix you up. Repeat this process until this quest is finished, and have everybody accept the quest reward from the reaper.
Escort of Souls
Have everybody take the Escort of Souls quest from the reaper. The easiest way to do this is to teleport back to the forgotten vale and work backwards towards the reaper of the labyrinth, killing the mindblade spectres (groups of 6) along the way. After clearing the way from this direction, escort the new souls back to Mayor Alegheri in the vale. Have everybody accept the quest reward. Be sure to kill the group of 6 mindblades that spawn at the starting point of the UW (see map) at this time.
Terrorweb Queen
Teleport to the chaos plains, and then work your way west towards the reaper of the spawning pools. This area is filled with many groups of charged blacknesses and terrorweb dryders, so be careful not to overaggro and watch out for multiple meteor showers. Pulling is highly recommended. Fortunately, the blacknesses tend to be very easy to pull. You can also use your obby tank to pull and get aggro before engaging.
Once you get to the reaper, have everybody take the Terrorweb Queen quest. The queen is invulnerable until you have taken down all of her guardians, so make sure you call a target and focus on one at a time. Once the guardians are dead, take down the queen. This should not be very difficult after the hordes you have just gone through. Have everybody accept the rewards and teleport back to the chaos plains.
Demon Assassin
Work your way towards the reaper of the twin serpent mountains fighting behemoths along the way. Be careful near the terrorweb dryders as there are many akwardly-placed behemoths along the way. If possible, take out all of the behemoths before taking down the last dryder. Once everything is cleared out, have one person take the Demon Assassin quest.
Have everyone move down the mountain and towards the east where the Slayer and two keeper of souls will be working their way towards you. Take them out, and then have everybody take/accept the quest reward. Teleport to the chaos plains.
Congratulations!
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